Three-Buck Chuck wine still bites

For the safety of the 20 attendees, I’ve kept it under wraps until now to give everyone time to cover their tracks.

Only waterboarding, dark chocolate or a 19-year-old could get their identities or the address out of me.

In the hosts’ driveway, we circled our modest, eco-friendly cars like a wagon train. Rather than protecting ourselves from horse-riding warriors reclaiming their native soil, we were on the lookout for high horsepowered cats in SUVs.

To gain entry into the meeting, we used a secret symbol and password — the peace sign and baying of a donkey. (Minorities and gays were admitted automatically.)

Upon entering, I knew it was a cult meeting by the black angel topping the Christmas tree. Immediately, I surmised this was not a tea party.

The meeting opened with a long-haired professor proposing a toast to the results of the November election. For me, this hinted that I had not wandered into the Republican National Headquarters.

When not on watch for bourgeois interlopers, I learned many interesting tidbits about politics on the High Plains:

• John Kennedy lost worse in Roosevelt County than anywhere in the country.

•A student snagged a NOBAMA decal at a local county fair, then snipped off the first letter before applying to his bicycle.

• You better be Protestant or Catholic (or pretend) if you want to win.

I shared my own story of once getting tricked into voting for a co-worker’s husband for a local office. Then, after he won, she told me they were actually “Democrats for Bush.”

That deception still stings, but probably not as much as the Three-Buck Chuck wine we toasted with — or the 2012 election for those not invited to the cult meeting.